“I am back home, in the city. I just about finished cleaning up. The dishes are all washed and left to dry, except for a heavy stockpot that needs soaking. I’d cooked this large, nostalgic meal – all for myself –and then I found I had no appetite, so I packed it all away. I place the pot in the sink and turn on the tap. I think, let the basin fill" (17).
The conversation in this quote is between nene and Juan. After nene arrives at Juan’s place to seek shelter, he asks him to explain how the flood occurred. The quote captures the paradox that foreshadowed the horrific flooding that terrorized city residents, forcing them to flee their homes. After cooking, nene abruptly lost his appetite, indicating something sinister was about to happen. After sleeping for a while, nene was woken up by a blackout. nene discovered his entire kitchen was flooded, and he decided to flee to safety.
“As if everything here is permanently set to some languorous tempo, eh, nene? The fan and the air, you and I, time itself" (154).
The quote is a statement from Juan reminding the narrator that the Palace is not a haven as he thinks because sometimes, it is also hit by disasters. The only thing nene can complain about at the Palace is heat, but Juan sarcastically reminds him that anything worse can happen, so it is better for the narrator to always be prepared.
“I see. Blame the old man. The old blames you. No one has to teach or learn" (20).
The quote explains the complex relationship between nene and Juan. nene is young, and Juan is an elderly man living in his last days. There is a communication barrier between these two friends. For instance, Juan uses old-fashioned quotes, and nene uses modern clichés, making their conversations complex. The narrator blames Juan for using outdated metaphors, and Juan blames the young narrator for using contemporary clichés.
"'Juan, do you know who is responsible for the erasures? Or what the hidden text says?'
'I might. I probably don't.'
'You enjoy frustrating me.'
'Not provoking? Pleasing?'
'Forget it.'
'Darling, the only thing anyone should be embarrassed about is taking themselves too seriously. Anyway, isn't that what mystery is? Your blackouts, these erasures? Frustration as art?' (53)"
Here we see one of the central tensions in the book: nene's desire for a precise, concrete knowledge up against Juan's belief in the unknowability of things. For nene, the blackout poems beg the question of what's missing; in the inked out passages he can only see that which was once there, that which needs to be discovered. But for Juan, the old meaning has been rendered meaningless, and the thing itself has become something new – has been transformed – via the inker's frustration.
"Though I prefer our copy here, I prefer the books just as I found them, covered in black. Filled with little poems of illumination. A counternarrative to whatever might have been Dr. Henry's agenda. No particular benefit to reading in order. Flip through to any page and there is a sketch of a life, ever unfolding, rising up out of the past, each a single testimony of how that person did or did not get over." (89)
Here Juan speaks directly to the power of the blackout poems – the power of certain kinds of erasure. The act of wiping out certain elements of the original text – a text aimed at studying queer people like specimens in a lab, so that they might be controlled – becomes a liberating act that allows more honest stories of these people to come to light. Whereas the original text tried to harness some universal thing among the participants into a vehicle for fear mongering, the new forms of blackout poems show the participants in their full humanity as unique, particular individuals.
"Our project, the project Juan wished to pass to me, didn't concern any of the particulars of that trial. Don't feel you need to keep them in your head, nene. Juan only brought up Browning because the poet raised pertinent questions about the very act of composition. More than simply retelling the case, Browning meditates on past and present, art and fact, source material and craftsmanship. Browning compares the old yellow book he'd found to gold, and he compares himself to a goldsmith; the pure hard metal of fact made malleable by the allow of his imagination" (56).
The novel is concerned with the act of storytelling in and of itself – questions like how to represent a life, how to do it on the page, and how to think beyond linear narrative are all circling throughout. Juan, now at the end of his life, seems to favor a less linear, more circular way of telling stories. In this scene, he has just recounted the plot of an epic poem to nene, a poem which makes use of nonlinearity and abstraction in its composition. There are many ways the story of the plot could be told, but Robert Browning – and Juan, and Justin Torres – ultimately decided that these kinds of compositional leaps were a better representation of the original experience. This is a meta-thread running through the book, as the novel itself – the one by Justin Torres – is engaged in the same kind of imaginative composition.
"The entire scene felt like a copy of a copy of a bad script, one I recognized from television and books. Everything, from the nurse's icy demeanor to my own timidity and dread--all of it a cliché little drama that must have played out in that very room countless times. I tried to observe the scene as if outside myself, focusing on the details, the ventilated suede, the scratch of the pen, the boredom in the nurse's voice." (26)
Nene describes his experience in rehab as something overflowing with cliché – it is familiar to the point of farce, like everyone is performing a scene. Torres takes on the language of theater and performance to describe nene's attempt to get through the experience; by recognizing the performance, he can try to further distance himself from the reality of it.
"I can perceive us from the eyes of the round family in the neighboring booth; I can hear the thoughts of the single men, eating alone at the counter, their hunched slabs of backs to us; and the waitress, of course, I've got her number, she's never going to bring that pot of coffee around again. We look ridiculous, he especially. I should be able to shut that off, that judgement, that concern for appearances. I should look at Liam, only Liam, and feel something." (240)
In this moment of intense intimacy, where nene's lover is confronting him about his infidelity, he cannot be present with him. Instead, nene's focus latches onto the other people in the restaurant, the people surrounding him and Liam, the people who might be witnessing their argument. He is so obsessed with perception that he cannot escape thinking about it in this pivotal moment in his relationship; he is so attuned to how everyone else is seeing them that he cannot properly see the man in front of him, trying to understand what has happened.
"Juan is going. Others come to the door. They visit Juan at his deathbed, take up conversations. They begin midsentence. They take up conversations long left idle. They do not reveal themselves to me. Juan says the voices speak from a place neither inside nor out. Blackouts follow; Juan's memory worsens. All about us, I sense deterioration." (253)
In this scene where Juan's death is imminent, Torres write toward a cracking of linear time. Juan has been dying for some time now, but at this point he is further along; he is near an end, but time, in the experience of death, is not as straightforward as language wants it to be. The experience of people visiting him on his deathbed is one of fracture, of fits and starts, of imprecision and circularity. There is a sense of vagueness and confusion to Juan's experience; not even the words coming from people's mouths are making much sense.
"Perhaps because the doctor knew the hand would be clammy, the wrist limp, the touch much too tender...Or perhaps it felt dangerous to say a final goodbye to one so clearly in distress. Remember this: not all ambiguities need be resolved, nene." (210)
In the story of one of the variants, Juan tells nene about the doctor pausing before taking the man's hand. Nene wonders why the doctor paused, and at this point, most of the way through the novel, it follows a pattern of interruption; Juan tells nene stories that often remain ambiguous, and nene interrupts, desiring some concrete information. In Juan's response, he posits hypothetical reasons for the pause – physical discomfort, emotional strain – highlighting the unknowability of certain things. Either could be true or both could be true. While nene longs for the true answer, Juan is less troubled by a "real" reason; in fact, he insists on it not being so opaque.
